Corin Stansfield
Email: 2381209S@student.gla.ac.uk
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0648-2229
Research title: Examining the patterns and mechanisms of developmental bias: a major force in evolution and disease
Research Summary
Developmental bias as a driver of adaptive radiations
Traditional models of evolution suggest that random mutations lead to random phenotypic changes. We're now beginning to understand that this view is simplistic and that development 'biases' evolution, making phenotypic variation more likely to occur in certain directions. However, the mechanisms underlying such biases, and their long-term consequences, are not yet understood.
My PhD will utilise two model fish systems - zebrafish mutant lines and geothermal populations of threespine stickleback from Iceland - to investigate how developmental biases can drive adaptive radiations. I'll use geometric morphometrics, gene-editing, and CT scanning to elucidate how biases influence the phenotypic effects of individual mutations and environmental fluctuations, and how these can lead to macroevolutionary patterns. This exciting program of work stands to highlight interactions between ecology, development, and evolution, and help us understand the processes that produce organismal form.
This work is funded by the BBSRC and is supervised by Kevin Parsons at the University of Glasgow and James Windmill at the University of Strathclyde
Supervisors
- Dr Kevin Parsons
- Professor James Windmill
- Dr Oskar Brattstrom
Conference
Euro Evo Devo 2024 (Helsinki) - Poster presentation titled "The genetic and epigenetic architecture of thermal plasticity in the threespine stickleback"
